4 ms·

I don't think it is lack of investment necessarily, so much as not building the right thing. What we need is a framework that is easy to use, cross platform,

by thayne 5mo ago

I don't think it is lack of investment necessarily, so much as not building the right thing. What we need is a framework that is easy to use, cross platform, open source, and ideally can be used from your programming language of choice.

victorio 5mo ago
You are not going to believe this... (joking)
einpoklum 5mo ago
Are the available FOSS cross-platform frameworks really not that good? There's at least Qt, GTK, umm, and, I guess Juce and wxWindows, right? Oh, I see there are more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_platform-independent_GUI_libraries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_platform-independent_G... Can you explain what's deficient about the first two I mentioned?
- MrDOS 5mo ago
  > Qt Arcane build system. I mean, I guess it technically supports CMake these days, but I have never been able to get anyone else's Qt project to build without much gnashing of teeth. Emulated native widgets try for pixel-perfect, but tend to feel wrong somehow. > Gtk Outside of a Linux/Gtk native environment, Gtk applications are awful. Take GIMP on macOS, for example: it's had window focus issues (export dialog getting lost behind the main application window) literally ever since Gtk on macOS dropped the XQuartz dependence. And that's the flagship application for the toolkit.
  - Pay08 5mo ago
    CMake support in Qt is perfectly fine nowadays. There are some (optional) custom commands you can use, but generally it's just plain CMake.
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
  - einpoklum 5mo ago
    So, your critique of Gtk sounds convincing, but about Qt, you seem to be admitting they're offering a less-horrible way to build than how things used to be. I looked at this: https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/cmake-get-started.html https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/cmake-get-started.html ... and I'll admit they seem to be hiding some nasty stuff under the hood. But it still seems workable. I guess the devil is in the details?
- hombre_fatal 5mo ago
  GTK 3 hello world is 150-200mb. They really messed up since GTK 2 was 30mb (like macOS AppKit).
  - WhyNotHugo 5mo ago
    GIMP itself is 62MB on my host, I'm not sure what kind of hello world you're building that's 3x that size.
    - einpoklum 5mo ago
      Maybe GP means on non-Linux systems? When you have to "vendor" a large number of libraries?
    - hombre_fatal 5mo ago
      Dunno, try it yourself. I wrote the hello world with C (12 lines?) and launched it on NixOS in Wayland (sway or niri). Maybe non-Wayland does better? Granted, not the best measure of memory usage. But the GTK 2 version was 30mb.
skydhash 5mo ago
> cross platform That's one word that should never been used in an design meeting. None of the GUI I've used has managed to do this right. Even Emacs and Firefox. The platform are totally different (and in the case of Linux/Unix, there's a lot of different HIG competing). So trying to be cross platform is a good illustration of the lesson in https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ The best bet should be a core with the domain with a UI shell. And then you swap the shell according to the platform.
- Gigachad 5mo ago
  I want my applications to look consistent across platforms. Why would I want discord for example to look entirely different between MacOS and Linux? With the current state of things, once I use the app anywhere, I'll know where everything is on any platform.
  - skydhash 5mo ago
    Take a good look around and check how often people do really change computer platform. And you already have so many things that are different that the "same look" is just an excuse. Gnome, KDE, macOS, Windows does not have the same UX in their file explorer which is a basic utility that everyone has to use. Same with connecting to a WiFi and creating a new user account. So why would you want Discord to be consistent, when you're mostly using the same desktop (or switch between at most two) for hours. The thing is when HIG were followed instead of everyone trying to create their "brand", everyone knows where the common actions were. You learned the platform and then can use any app. With the new trend, you would only have one computer, but any new app is a new puzzle to figure out.
    - Gigachad 5mo ago
      I don't really have any issues working out how to use modern electron apps, they all follow very simple UX patterns, I find them much easier to use than the average native wxWidgets/qt app. Simple, consistent UI is less about the color scheme and border radius being consistent and about things being simple and well laid out on a higher level. Two apps can have different CSS while being easy to understand because the core flows and ideas are the same. While many older native apps feel like junk draw UI with crap thrown everywhere and weird app specific quirks and patterns. Even if it all does use native inputs and windows.

by thayne 5mo ago

victorio 5mo ago

You are not going to believe this... (joking)

einpoklum 5mo ago

Are the available FOSS cross-platform frameworks really not that good? There's at least Qt, GTK, umm, and, I guess Juce and wxWindows, right? Oh, I see there are more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_platform-independent_GUI_libraries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_platform-independent_G... Can you explain what's deficient about the first two I mentioned?

MrDOS 5mo ago
> Qt Arcane build system. I mean, I guess it technically supports CMake these days, but I have never been able to get anyone else's Qt project to build without much gnashing of teeth. Emulated native widgets try for pixel-perfect, but tend to feel wrong somehow. > Gtk Outside of a Linux/Gtk native environment, Gtk applications are awful. Take GIMP on macOS, for example: it's had window focus issues (export dialog getting lost behind the main application window) literally ever since Gtk on macOS dropped the XQuartz dependence. And that's the flagship application for the toolkit.
- Pay08 5mo ago
  CMake support in Qt is perfectly fine nowadays. There are some (optional) custom commands you can use, but generally it's just plain CMake.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- einpoklum 5mo ago
  So, your critique of Gtk sounds convincing, but about Qt, you seem to be admitting they're offering a less-horrible way to build than how things used to be. I looked at this: https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/cmake-get-started.html https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/cmake-get-started.html ... and I'll admit they seem to be hiding some nasty stuff under the hood. But it still seems workable. I guess the devil is in the details?
hombre_fatal 5mo ago
GTK 3 hello world is 150-200mb. They really messed up since GTK 2 was 30mb (like macOS AppKit).
- WhyNotHugo 5mo ago
  GIMP itself is 62MB on my host, I'm not sure what kind of hello world you're building that's 3x that size.
  - einpoklum 5mo ago
    Maybe GP means on non-Linux systems? When you have to "vendor" a large number of libraries?
  - hombre_fatal 5mo ago
    Dunno, try it yourself. I wrote the hello world with C (12 lines?) and launched it on NixOS in Wayland (sway or niri). Maybe non-Wayland does better? Granted, not the best measure of memory usage. But the GTK 2 version was 30mb.

skydhash 5mo ago

> cross platform That's one word that should never been used in an design meeting. None of the GUI I've used has managed to do this right. Even Emacs and Firefox. The platform are totally different (and in the case of Linux/Unix, there's a lot of different HIG competing). So trying to be cross platform is a good illustration of the lesson in https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ The best bet should be a core with the domain with a UI shell. And then you swap the shell according to the platform.

Gigachad 5mo ago
I want my applications to look consistent across platforms. Why would I want discord for example to look entirely different between MacOS and Linux? With the current state of things, once I use the app anywhere, I'll know where everything is on any platform.
- skydhash 5mo ago
  Take a good look around and check how often people do really change computer platform. And you already have so many things that are different that the "same look" is just an excuse. Gnome, KDE, macOS, Windows does not have the same UX in their file explorer which is a basic utility that everyone has to use. Same with connecting to a WiFi and creating a new user account. So why would you want Discord to be consistent, when you're mostly using the same desktop (or switch between at most two) for hours. The thing is when HIG were followed instead of everyone trying to create their "brand", everyone knows where the common actions were. You learned the platform and then can use any app. With the new trend, you would only have one computer, but any new app is a new puzzle to figure out.
  - Gigachad 5mo ago
    I don't really have any issues working out how to use modern electron apps, they all follow very simple UX patterns, I find them much easier to use than the average native wxWidgets/qt app. Simple, consistent UI is less about the color scheme and border radius being consistent and about things being simple and well laid out on a higher level. Two apps can have different CSS while being easy to understand because the core flows and ideas are the same. While many older native apps feel like junk draw UI with crap thrown everywhere and weird app specific quirks and patterns. Even if it all does use native inputs and windows.